Patristics

My eight-year-old son and his best friend debated whether God chooses “us” or we choose Him. My son was adamant with a simple yet meaningful point: God wouldn’t just kick us down, he continued to say to his friend, drawing me in with, Right, Mom? I left the dishes in...

This is the third and final part of Fr. Matthew’s series on Deification and Sonship. Read part I and part II Indwelling through the Spirit of sonship Athanasius’ account of deification (theopoiesis) and adoptive sonship (huiothesia) is not limited only to the work of Christ, but also accords a central place to the...

This is the second part of Fr. Matthew’s series. Click here to read Part I and Part III. If in De Incarnatione the goal and purpose of the incarnation is identified with deification (theopoiesis), in his later works Athanasius more frequently links it specifically with adoptive sonship (huiothesia). Athanasius’ earliest exposition of this doctrine of...

Deification and Sonship According to St Athanasius of Alexandria: Part I Popular presentations of the Orthodox Christian faith often highlight the doctrine of theosis, or deification, as a distinctive accent of Orthodox theology and spiritual teaching. In the 20th century, owing to the enthusiastic rediscovery of St Gregory Palamas and...

Fasting is a medicine. But medicine, as beneficial as it is, becomes useless because of the inexperience of the user. He has to know the appropriate time that the medicine should be taken and the right amount of medicine and the condition of the body which is to take it,...

“Proof texting” is a well known problem, especially when it comes to interpreting Holy Scripture. Some people develop whole theologies around a narrow interpretation of a few scattered verses (or even isolated books of the Bible), ignoring what the Church Father’s called the skopos: the overall purpose or ultimate meaning...

Editor’s note: Part I of this series may be found here. Without a doubt, the richest source for theological epistemology in pre-Nicene Christian literature is to be found in Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215). In fact, it is Clement who gives us perhaps the most philosophically detailed...

Christianity entered the Greco-Roman world as a religion of the incarnate Logos – word or reason – of God. With such a message and with the growth of conversions from the educated Hellenized culture, Christian theologians were compelled early on to reflect upon the “ways of knowing” – that is,...

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